How can knowledge base growth be realistically measured?

Kathy,
You've written "lessening the time required to create new articles".
But were is this time for articles creating in formula above?
Didn't you consider this "micro-costs" by analyzing KnBase ROI?

And what is the difference between cases need assictance and impacted cases?
Thx!

Hi Andrei,

Here are answers to your questions.

*** COST TO GEN KB ARTICLES***

The formulas you see above focus just on the savings gain.

However, you're right, you do want to account for the time needed to create the cases as part of the cost of the activity.

Our typical approach is to capture the time as a People Cost. Here's the formula for People costs:

Burdened Compensation per Social Team Member =
(Salary + bonus + benefits load) x (%Time Devoted to Social)

Total People Cost = Sum of all individual costs.

You could get super anal and break out the cost solely for KB generation. Most of our clients don't require that level of granularity so we lump the People Costs.

Many of our clients have tech solutions that allow them to fully or partially automate article creation (by "sucking" in content via connectivity between their CRM and online community).

The tech costs for social are one of the cost categories we consider in the ROI.

This slidedeck shows a summary of both People and Tech Costs: http://www.slideshare.net/kathyherrmann/focus-social-customer-service-roi

Go to slide 12 to begin the Cost section.

And for...

*** IMPACTED CASES ***

"Cases needing assistance" are those that still require a customer to call or email in.

"Impacted Cases" are those that are deflected by KB articles. This is a projected variable we determine by looking at changes in call center stats compared to changes in the volume of in KB articles as they're generated.

Kathy, thx!
And to explaine one more detail.
In your presentations befor this serie you have indirect deflection. Are IMPACTED CASES the same thing? From definition above it seems to be so: deflected without assistance (as ready answers to client questions etc).

Sometimes it seems to have risk of double-counting.

Andrei,

Dr. Natalie and I consider both Direct and Indirect Deflection. Not sure if you heard our Social Customer Service ROI roundtable, so let me give a few definitions for clarity.

Direct deflections occur when a customer who would normally call or email a contact center for assisted support instead posts a question (in a new conversation) in a social channel and gets an answer directly from within the social channel.

Indirect deflections occur when lurkers search within a community and find the answers to their questions by reading what other people have posted.

If you missed the roundtable on Social Customer Service ROI and want to catch up....

http://www.focus.com/roundtables/simplifying-social-business-how-calculate-so...

As for your question of double dipping, the answer is it depends on a company's social program. In some cases, it could be double dipping and in others, it's not. That's a call Dr. Natalie and I make when we structure our ROI analysis with client input.

Let me give you an example where it's NOT double dipping.

Consider a company that has a Facebook community - and the commmunity has active problem-solving discussions among customers. The FB community then becomes a source of both direct and indirect deflection.

Now, imagine the company also has a separate support community -- and it includes a growing KB, helped at least in part automated content generation sourced by content from the FB community.

Customers who find in the KB become a source of indirect deflection.

Kathy,
I am very happy to recieve your so detailed answer.
Now I understand the point. And my question about impacted cases comes after your roundtable.
In my case I have community platform, that works as public and internal KB simultaneously, and FB + TW + blogs..
And at first time it is complex and sometimes unclear process to develop custom social customer ROI solution without double dipping.
I hope to have concret question when I come little further by solution developing )